John Boehner: Can anyone govern the Crazy Caucus?

House Speaker John Boehner looked ineffectual on Plan B -- but he just might be his party's only hope

BY JONATHAN BERNSTEIN

John Boehner may not last much longer as speaker of the House – but I wouldn’t count him out. Despite having an impossible situation, he’s probably done about as well as anyone could, this week’s Plan B meltdown notwithstanding. He may, as Steve Kornacki suggests, simply decide he’s had it and walk away. But House Republicans, whether moderate or conservative, would be foolish to encourage it.

For most of the 20th century, speaker of the House wasn’t a particularly important job – powerful committee chairs ruled, and speakers could do little about it. A long process of reform, however, removed most of the clout of those barons and strengthened party leadership, making modern speakers far more powerful than their mid-century predecessors. Since the modern speakership emerged in the 1970s, there have been three basic models of how to handle the office:

Dictators: Newt Gingrich and Jim Wright. Both used the rules to maximize the influence of the speaker, running a top-down House which brought whatever the speaker wanted to the floor with ruthless efficiency. Committees were mostly irrelevant, and they were packed to guarantee the speaker’s influence anyway. In both cases, members were at first perfectly happy with the arrangement; both speakerships began with plenty of pent-up majority party ideas, and so having those ideas turned into laws (or at least having them pass the House) was enough to keep everyone happy – for a while. Soon enough, however, members tired of the situation, and neither Gingrich nor Wright lasted long in their jobs.

Weaklings: Dennis Hastert and Tom Foley. Both followed dictators, and both reacted by decentralizing, giving committees more responsibility. Generally, it didn’t work out very well. It’s probably a coincidence that both speakerships ended when their parties lost majorities in the House, but it may not be a coincidence that both had majorities with an unusual number of ethics scandals. Both found it difficult to pass legislation – remember that Bill Clinton’s health bill never made it to the House floor.

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http://www.salon.com/2012/12/22/john_boehner_can_anyone_govern_the_crazy_caucus/